Rhodes Business School director Professor Owen Skae said the project spoke to the need for Rhodes to join other higher education institutions globally that played a major role in their immediate communities through hubs of innovation.

It was hoped the project would allow Rhodes to evolve into a “communiversity” – a newly coined global term to reflect the role universities played in providing academic and cultural stimulation to the communities in which they were located, Skae said.

Available to stream through mobile app Tuluntulu, the prerecorded lectures are aimed at promoting social enterprise and entrepreneurship and empowering local people with business management skills.

The channel offers 40 hours of content which can be viewed free with a Wi-Fi connection.

With the use of a smart device, anyone can watch presentations prerecorded in a studio, the first of which are commercial law lectures presented by Advocate Shuaib Rahim.

Lectures are scheduled in specific time slots but are repeated later.

“It is the digital era and we need to find ways of making knowledge accessible at the lowest possible cost to as many people as possible,” Skae said.

Rhodes spokeswoman Veliswa Mhlope said based on the success of the channel, a fully-fledged TV channel would be developed.

Tuluntulu is a mobile “TV” platform offering various 24/7 streaming video and radio channels.